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How does a $50 billion boost to the US economy sound? Not bad? Well, what about all the new
addicts we could see pop up on the streets? Theoretically, it's all possible.
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By Shirley Skeel
Every year, about 2 million people in the U.S. are arrested for drug offenses, including using or
selling marijuana, heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine. About a third of the country's prisoners are
held on drug charges or for crimes attributed to drug abuse.
But what if we legalized all street drugs?
More kids would decide to try drugs "just once," and more would get hooked. Some lives would be
ruined. But other lives would be saved. Gang murders would fall sharply. Thousands of people now
in jail would be free to find work and feed their families. We'd save billions on the war on drugs, and
a new drug industry would create jobs and loads of taxable revenue.
Of course, it may sound like madness. And the gut feeling among many people is that it would be
disastrous.
Don Semesky, the former chief of financial operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration in
Washington, D.C., asks: "Have you ever seen a meth addict, with all those sores and rotten teeth?
And what they do to their kids? Do you want the government to be responsible for that?"
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Europe offers some clues. In 1976, the Netherlands decided to tolerate (though not legalize) the
selling of small amounts of cannabis in licensed coffee shops. At first there was little change in
usage. But between 1984 and 1992, as shops opened rapidly, smoking of the drug doubled among
Dutch 18- to 20-year-olds.
"In that case, it looked like changing the legal status was of minor importance, but opening
commercial outlets mattered," says Mark Kleiman, the director of the Drug Policy Analysis Program
at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Moreover, what if drugs were glamorously promoted via YouTube or Facebook, or even big business?
Peter Reuter, a professor of public policy and criminology at the University of Maryland, says it
would be hard to block advertising because there's little proof that marijuana is harmful.
"I think we'd see a fair amount of promotion," he says. "Then you could have large increases in use."
Kleiman adds, "Imagine what Philip Morris and MillerCoors could do if we gave them cannabis to
work with."
Would addiction increase?
One oddity that stands out in the research is that the Dutch are still only midrange users of
marijuana by European standards. By some measures, they use marijuana far less than Americans,
according to a recent World Health Organization survey.
It's thought that this is due to differing social norms, which raises another point. If drugs were legal
in America, this could send a powerful signal to kids that drugs are OK. Add this to the lower price,
addictive effects of some drugs and easy access, and drug use could rise quite a bit. To offset this,
we could run campaigns warning against the stuff. That might work. It might not.
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The response from marijuana reform advocates is: "So what if use increases? It's harmless anyway."
However, that remains unproved. Researchers worry about the high tar content, the risk of personal
injury while someone is "high" and about any effects on students' work.
As for legalizing all drugs, Harvard's Miron argues that the increase in drug abuse would likely be
small. "Millions of people don't smoke cigarettes. The same is true of alcohol . . . because they know
that too much of it is not good for you," he says. People who are prone to abuse drugs are probably
already abusing them, he adds.
That's hardly so, Reuter argues. Heroin and cocaine "are attractive drugs," he says. "Lots of kids
would experiment, and maybe 3 or 4% would become dependent. So the increase in addiction might
be very substantial."
The added costs
Whichever case proved true, there could be extra costs to U.S. taxpayers for abusers' medical
treatment, family support, petty crime and lost worker productivity.
Just how much is hard to say. And how these negative economic effects might net out against the
positive effects is virtually impossible to say. Data on drug-use behavior are thin and often
contradictory.
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Pot University
One school starts a certification process to sell medical marijuana, CNBC's Jane Wells reports.
Of course, everyone can have an opinion.
Semesky says, "Nobody is going to be better off." The Office of National Drug Control Policy puts the
cost of drug abuse at $145 billion (.pdf file), including medical expenses and lost productivity. That's
more than the cost of cancer. If drugs were legal, some of these costs would rise, some would fall.
Semesky believes the net effect would be highly negative.
Miron says a small rise in drug abuse would be far outweighed by the gains from reduced violent
crime, freed-up police resources, a more productive citizenry and reduced illness from bad drugs
and dirty needles.
Rosalie Pacula, the director of the Rand Drug Policy Research Center in Santa Monica, Calif., says
there are huge unknowns. But if you look at the effects of alcohol and tobacco abuse, she says,
legalizing drugs would be "very, very risky."
Could this happen?
How likely is it that street drugs would be legalized?
The possession of small amounts of marijuana has been decriminalized in 12 states, meaning
offenders might get fined but won't be jailed or given a criminal record. Nonetheless, full legalization
of marijuana is hardly likely. In a 2002 CNN/Time Magazine poll, 59% of respondents opposed
legalizing marijuana, and 34% favored it. Although attitudes are getting more liberal, marijuana is
not legal anywhere in the world.
As for other street drugs, don't even ask. The question of legalization is no more than an interesting
academic exercise.
Published Sept. 3, 2008